BitWrangler wrote on 2022-02-03, 02:42:

The early 21st century crop of 4 head VCRs with instant auto tracking and comb filters etc make tape look a lot better than they did in the 80s or 90s. Only Betamax looked that good back in the day!

I have a mid 90s Sony 4 head - wonderful piece of tech. My wife won't let me set it up with the home entertainment system in the living room, but in all honesty I only have 5-6 tapes for it anyhow. I mainly use it to capture footage off of.

LHN91 wrote on 2022-02-03, 02:49:

Edit: actually Christmas '91, the commercials in the Bette Midler movie were for Canadian Tire Christmas sales and the '92 GM/Chevy/Geo lineup.

I'd be interested in seeing that CTC commercial - I think at that time, I ordered stuff from it to a letter for"santa" (H0H 0H0)

OK so the 3DLabs Permedia 2's OpenGL ICD is COMPLETELY broken in Half Life. Runs horrribly with only basic colors loading, no detail textures to speak of. Direct3D mode works fine. FireGL indeed, as in dumpster fire.

Can anyone recommend a good VGA capture device? I would like to document this sort of stuff.

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-02-03, 02:42:

The early 21st century crop of 4 head VCRs with instant auto tracking and comb filters etc make tape look a lot better than they did in the 80s or 90s. Only Betamax looked that good back in the day!

One trick is to keep an eye out for a VCR with the "S-VHS" logo on it. I found that these always made any regular tape look better due to whatever wizardry was happening inside.

New build in the works. going to be running windows 95.

pentium 233mmx
asus tx97-x
64mb ram
diamond s3 virge 3d 2000
sound blaster 16
in search of a voodoo 1 that doesn't cost an arm and a leg

Jed118 wrote on 2022-02-03, 03:10:

I have a mid 90s Sony 4 head - wonderful piece of tech. My wife won't let me set it up with the home entertainment system in the living room, but in all honesty I only have 5-6 tapes for it anyhow. I mainly use it to capture footage off of.

Yah that'd probably be one of the higher end ones that first had it before it filtered down to the under $100 in Walmart models.

I've been testing 5.1 surround sound capabilities of some older games. Was pleasantly surprised that the original Deus Ex which was released in the year 2000 supports this. I then tested Unreal Tournament '99 and, sure enough, surround sound works there as well.

Didn't realize that 5.1 support in games already existed this early. Cool stuff.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2022-02-02, 23:09:

Is there even a point to DDR memory on the PCI bus? Like a GeForce2MX with 32MB of SDR more than saturates the bus, and can barely run Morrowind at 640x480 lowest settings. I need to find a 64MB DDR AGP card to compare against, but it seems like 64MB + DDR + AGP is a rare combo. Most AGP cards only have 32MB of memory OR are SDR.

You do realize that being DDR also means double the transfer rate between GPU and DRAM, not just over the bus right?

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-02-03, 04:36:

Jed118 wrote on 2022-02-03, 03:10:

I have a mid 90s Sony 4 head - wonderful piece of tech. My wife won't let me set it up with the home entertainment system in the living room, but in all honesty I only have 5-6 tapes for it anyhow. I mainly use it to capture footage off of.

Yah that'd probably be one of the higher end ones that first had it before it filtered down to the under $100 in Walmart models.

I picked it up when my Uni's A/V were throwing out old equipment, like 15 years ago, maybe even more than that. It still has the orange band on it, indicating that it came from the orange closet 😉 Believe it or not, we still have two of them in semi-active use 😉

X86 wrote on 2022-02-03, 04:07:

in search of a voodoo 1 that doesn't cost an arm and a leg

You, and the whole "remember when.." generation 😒

LHN91 wrote on 2022-02-02, 23:31:

Not retro computing, but retro... doing some VHS captures for family, and one of the tapes had a downright flashy, embossed, golden label. Honestly I've never seen anything like this on a VHS tape.
IMG_20220202_181213.jpg

It is retro computing, if you consider this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUS0Zv2APjU

Today I saved a Floppy Drive.

From outside it was looking very good. No "glue" marks, no scratches, almost looking like it's been never used.
But inside....

After cleanup, and even some greases on the stepper motor spindle

Now working like a charm !
Mission accomplished

My RGB mechanical wal-mart keyboard suffered 3 keys that no longer work while I tried to login last night. Dell Quiet Key to the rescue!

NyLan wrote on 2022-02-03, 10:06:

Today I saved a Floppy Drive. […]
Show full quote

Today I saved a Floppy Drive.

From outside it was looking very good. No "glue" marks, no scratches, almost looking like it's been never used.
But inside....

2022-02-03 09.48.04.jpg
2022-02-03 09.48.25.jpg

After cleanup, and even some greases on the stepper motor spindle

2022-02-03 10.35.55.jpg
2022-02-03 10.36.29.jpg
2022-02-03 10.42.31.jpg

Now working like a charm !
Mission accomplished

They get like that when there's the PSU and maybe one other fan pushing air out, but no intake fans or free breathing large grilles... air gets "filtered" through the poor floppy drive.

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-02-03, 13:50:

NyLan wrote on 2022-02-03, 10:06:

Today I saved a Floppy Drive. […]
Show full quote

Today I saved a Floppy Drive.

From outside it was looking very good. No "glue" marks, no scratches, almost looking like it's been never used.
But inside....

2022-02-03 09.48.04.jpg
2022-02-03 09.48.25.jpg

After cleanup, and even some greases on the stepper motor spindle

2022-02-03 10.35.55.jpg
2022-02-03 10.36.29.jpg
2022-02-03 10.42.31.jpg

Now working like a charm !
Mission accomplished

They get like that when there's the PSU and maybe one other fan pushing air out, but no intake fans or free breathing large grilles... air gets "filtered" through the poor floppy drive.

Yep, most likely. On old computer most of the time you only had the PSU Fan. I'll post another picture of the drive later today. The bottom is not made as other with a thin sheet metal. It's a thick aluminium piece.
It looks so nice 😊 😎

Bought a SCSI Ultra 320 HBA card with 4 head cable and terminator, gonna see if these Ultra 320 drives I have are still kicking, if so then perhaps one of the P3 machines I have will inherit 4 15k 80gb SCSI drives, tho I do wonder how hot these suckers get under normal use and if I should case mod some cooling fans into the front to cool them a bit.

Thinking about it .. I remember these things sounding like a jet engine so I should invest in some sound deadening material too.

And the P3238 is alive and kicking booting. Nothing beats the sound of an initializing ST-157A!
After that it booted DOS 4.01 and Windows 3.0... Happy Days.

The correct drive type was number 10. After running setup.com (to access the CMOS setup), it magically changed to drive type 25. Ha! Oh... hmm...

Jed118 wrote on 2022-02-02, 19:01:

pinesal wrote on 2022-02-02, 18:36:

I am going to Twitch stream myself installing Windows 98 and a drivers and other software tonight.

People watch this? I'm only asking because I do similar things on YouTube - send me a link to your stream pls.

I had a few of people pop in but it wasn't a hugely successful stream. But I'd do it again.

My statistics were

Average Viewers: 2.7
Number of Unique Viewers: 10

LINK here https://twitch.tv/90snick_pinesal

pinesal wrote on 2022-02-03, 16:18:

I had a few of people pop in but it wasn't a hugely successful stream. But I'd do it again. […]
Show full quote

Jed118 wrote on 2022-02-02, 19:01:

pinesal wrote on 2022-02-02, 18:36:

I am going to Twitch stream myself installing Windows 98 and a drivers and other software tonight.

People watch this? I'm only asking because I do similar things on YouTube - send me a link to your stream pls.

I had a few of people pop in but it wasn't a hugely successful stream. But I'd do it again.

My statistics were

Average Viewers: 2.7
Number of Unique Viewers: 10

LINK here https://twitch.tv/90snick_pinesal

Building an audience can be challenging. If you are going in for that and want to monetize make sure to stay consistent. I have read two to three times a week. In other words... work. I do about one video every three to four months. I'm taking the world by storm. 🤣 Seriously, though, if you love to do it, keep at it.

Edit: Love that room you work out of. It's a playground!

NyLan wrote on 2022-02-03, 14:02:

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-02-03, 13:50:

NyLan wrote on 2022-02-03, 10:06:

Today I saved a Floppy Drive. […]
Show full quote

Today I saved a Floppy Drive.

From outside it was looking very good. No "glue" marks, no scratches, almost looking like it's been never used.
But inside....

2022-02-03 09.48.04.jpg
2022-02-03 09.48.25.jpg

After cleanup, and even some greases on the stepper motor spindle

2022-02-03 10.35.55.jpg
2022-02-03 10.36.29.jpg
2022-02-03 10.42.31.jpg

Now working like a charm !
Mission accomplished

They get like that when there's the PSU and maybe one other fan pushing air out, but no intake fans or free breathing large grilles... air gets "filtered" through the poor floppy drive.

Yep, most likely. On old computer most of the time you only had the PSU Fan. I'll post another picture of the drive later today. The bottom is not made as other with a thin sheet metal. It's a thick aluminium piece.
It looks so nice 😊 😎

See the thick aluminium piece. First time I see a 1.44MB Floppy drive manufactured like this.

Currently re-watching the Lord of the Rings Extended Version DVDs on my AthlonXP rig running Win98SE.

For this purpose, I've connected the SBLive 5.1 to my Logitech X-530 speakers. I was originally using VxD drivers, but for some reason, the center channel always remained silent, regardless of what settings I tried. After switching to WDM drivers, I'm getting proper 5.1 surround sound, and it's working perfectly.

For playback, I'm using PowerDVD, just like in the good old days.